Dustin Poirier is still irked with how his fight against Nate Diaz fell through.
Poirier and Diaz were scheduled to meet at UFC 230 in November 2018, but the fight was scrapped when Poirier injured his hip. “The Diamond,” who is now retired, wants to clarify that the notion of him pulling out is not correct.
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Should he get the opportunity to fight Diaz in the UFC, Poirier would be all over it.
“Man, I still want to whip Nate’s ass,” Poirier said on UFC on Paramount+. “I’ll come back to fight him because it got away, and he lied, and the fans were on his side. The UFC knew I was going to fight Nate in our first matchup at Madison Square Garden, but Nate was having trouble with his negotiation. I don’t know what was going on, but UFC called me and said, ‘Hey, we want to keep you on the Madison Square Garden card. Would you fight so-and-so?’
“They started offering me other people, and I said, ‘Listen, if it’s not Nate, I’m not fighting. I’m going to go and have my hip taken care of. If it’s Nate, I’ll fight.’ It wasn’t Nate. They offered me Kevin Lee. They offered me a few other names. I said, ‘I’m going to go have surgery on my hip.’ Then Nate used that as like I was the fall guy, like fight’s off because I pulled out. But I never pulled out. I just didn’t want to fight anyone but Nate.”
Diaz’s return won’t come in the octagon. Diaz takes on fellow ex-UFC star Mike Perry May 16 on MVP’s inaugural MMA card, which streams live on Netflix from the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Dustin Poirier: ‘I still want to whip Nate Diaz’s ass’
